Major and Minor: what's a subrarity? (Patreon)

Hey adventurers!

In certain official 5e publications, magic items are categorized into two subrarities: Major and Minor. These are ways to help determine the overall strength of an item, but shouldn't be considered as a tiering system for their utility.

In the book, and on the ledger+, you'll see me mark Major items with an "M" and Minor items with an "m." This is to save space as well as keep two similar-looking words from getting mixed up.

I learned how to determine these subrarities from a reply to a question on RPG Stack Exchange by a user named Red Orca. It is in depth, clear, and extremely perceptive. This post here on Patreon is merely a way to bring its contents to a wider audience (with Red Orca's knowledge), and prevent the information from being lost from the internet for reasons beyond our control. If you like this breakdown, you can, and should, read the original post here and upvote their response.

The following is directly from their post, which, I can't stress enough, is very good:

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What is a consumable item?

For the purpose of the following guidelines, a consumable item is an item that can permanently become non-magical or otherwise be destroyed during normal use. An item with charges that can regain them an unlimited amount of times does not count as consumable, even if it can be destroyed by consuming its last charge and rolling a 1 on a d20.

Categorization rules

1. All consumable items are minor items, unless any of the following are true:
   • They have an extremely large amount of uses/charges (> 10), typically for a significant effect (gem of brightness, candle of invocation).
   • The only way they stop working is being destroyed via HP loss, typically from some direct action from an opposing creature (iron bands of Bilarro, rope of entanglement). Additionally, they aren't expected to always be destroyed the first time they are used.
   • They grant a potentially campaign-breaking effect to characters who otherwise would not have it (efreeti bottle).
2. All common items are minor items.
3. All non-consumable uncommon items are minor items unless any of the following are true:
   • They provide a major combat benefit. For example, they may...
     • Grant a bonus to hit, damage, saving throws, or save DCs.
     • Summon (or appear to summon) combat-capable creatures.
     • Provide in-combat advantage on a common skill, like Stealth or Perception. Removing a disadvantage doesn't count.
     • Grant resistance to a type of damage.
     • Grant or duplicate combat spells or additional spell slots.
     • Grant a flying speed, increase your walking speed, or allow you to walk where you otherwise couldn't.
     • Increase one of your ability scores.
   • They block high level magic, like scrying.
   • They provide a major dungeon crawling benefit, like advantage on thieves' tools checks.
   • They provide a major social benefit, like detect thoughts or at-will disguise self.
4. All non-consumable rare or very rare items are major items, unless they have little or extremely situational combat benefit (folding boat). Cursed items may have a detriment instead of a benefit.
5. All non-consumable legendary items are major items.

Conclusion

If the item is consumable or is common, rare, very rare, or legendary, it is usually fairly simple to categorize; however, non-consumable uncommon items are a gray area. If they have a major combat benefit, the answer is simple. If not, you end up comparing them to existing items and dreaming up ways they could be used.

Does the wand of secrets provide less of a dungeon crawling benefit than the gloves of thievery? Is it really more important to be able to jump really far (boots of striding and springing) than to see in the dark as a human (goggles of night)? I'm not sure.

What I do know, is that the same people who wrote the XGtE tables decided that attunement-free unlimited flight without an action (broom of flying) is less rare than attunement-required 1 hour flight with an action (wings of flying). You're probably better off using your own discretion for the edge cases.

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There you have it, adventurers: that's how I determine whether an item is Major or Minor. These subrarities are, often, never noticed by players, but are a useful tool when you go about making Loot Tables. These tables are separated by rarity, with the lower tables (Magic Item Tables A–E) using Minor items and higher tables (Magic Item Tables F–I) for Major ones.

Again, I have nothing but kind words to say for Red Orca's post on Stack Exchange from where this post's content is drawn from. If you found value in it, please be sure to thank them for it with an upvote!

Thank you as always for your enthusiasm for this content, and for wanting to learn more about subrarities! Keep on adventuring!

-g